200 THE POSSIBILITIES 



have been so shamefully driven out of the 

 market as it was a few years ago. 



The extension given to horticulture in America 

 is immense. The " truck farms " alone that 

 is, the farms which work for export by rail or 

 steam covered in the States in 1892 no less 

 than 400,000 acres. At the very doors of 

 Chicago one single market-gardening farm 

 covers 500 acres J and out of these, 150 acres 

 are given to cucumbers, 50 acres to early peas, 

 and so on. During the Chicago Exhibition a 

 special " strawberry express," composed of 

 thirty waggons, brought in every day 324,000 

 quarts of the freshly gathered fruit, and there 

 are days that over 10,000 bushels of straw- 

 berries are imported in New York three-fourths 

 of that amount coming from the " truck farms " 

 of Virginia by steamer.* 



This is what can be achieved by an intelligent 

 combination of agriculture with industry, and 

 undoubtedly will be applied on a still larger 

 scale in the future. 



However, a further advance is being made in 

 order to emancipate horticulture from climate. 

 I mean the glasshouse culture of fruit and 

 vegetables. 



Formerly the greenhouse was the luxury of 



* Charles Baltet, L' Horticulture, etc. 



